Sunflowers and Nuclear Disaster
by Armin-05
Summary: It's long been a joke between her and her favorite siblings that sunflowers clean up nuclear disasters, and Vanya is - coincidentally - named after a nuclear bomb. Therefore, she likes sunflowers. Years later she finds that maybe her name isn't a coincidence after all.


Color gently drifts off the strings, floating in the air behind her eyelids. Dancing, swirling, just barely there, blue, then red, and gold and pink and more, a whisper tugging at her hair. Her heart beats in her ears, a steady, comforting drum against which the music _sings_. Occasionally there's a crinkle as a page turns, a quiet green flashing, it blends into the medley and the color as easy as clouds drift across the sky.

It's just her, the colors, and the music.

"Hey Vanya?"

"Hmm?" She opened her eyes, the colors disappearing as if they'd never been there, which was the truth. The colors didn't exist, she never saw them, really. Even in her playing it was only her imagination, just what color might go with what note.

Ben smiled at her apologetically from where he and Five were seated on Vanya's bed, reading. She waved his concern away. "Yes?"

"I just wanted to ask if you knew that 'Vanya' was the codename of a Russian nuclear bomb?"

"…What?" Vanya set her violin down, and even Five sat up, confusion lingering on his face.

"And more importantly, why did you know that?" Five asked. Ben grinned smugly at the knowledge that he knew something their genius brother didn't.

Five, of course, smacked him with Vanya's pillow. Ben endured the onslaught like a true champ.

"Okay, okay, so," Ben snickered after Five's reign of pillow terror was over, lifting his book. "I got interested in knowing the meaning and history of our names, now that we have names." He tilted his head at Vanya, as Five had refused a name. "And I came across this – actually, here," he shifted the book, letting both Five and Vanya curl up against his sides, "'The soviet R-D-S-two-zero-two hydrogen bomb – codenamed Ivan or Vanya – was allegedly the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created.'"

"It was tested in 1961, and remains the most powerful bomb to this day," Five murmured, already farther down the passage because of course he was. "Huh, that's neat." He smiled at her, "You're named after a bomb."

"We don't know that," Vanya denied, a smile pulling at her lips. "It could be coincidence."

"Maybe," Ben offered, straight-faced. "But if you were, now we know that if you'd been a guy, you'd have been named _Ivan_."

Five and Vanya paused, Five looked thoughtfully at her, she looked thoughtfully at him.

And they burst into peals of laughter.

* * *

It's not long after that that the Umbrella Academy is called for a mission. One of many since they debuted. Vanya is left at home, of course, to wait with Mom and Pogo. Her siblings are gone for over three hours, and when they return they're covered in scratches.

As she goes upstairs to wait on Five and Ben to tell her how it went, Five pops into existence beside her, hands her a sunflower of all things, and disappears again, his blue crackling as he goes. She's left holding this _huge_ flower – who knew flowers could be this big? The pit of the sunflower is wider than her hand, and almost as long, with petals longer than her finger bending towards the floor.

Vanya's left standing there with it for a ridiculously long time, before finally pulling herself to her room to wait. It doesn't take long for her boys to show up, bandaged but alive.

"Hi Vanya," Ben murmurs, downcast. He always is, but he's also alive, so Vanya smiled at him kindly and turns to Five.

"Five, what the heck."

"What, didn't like it?" He teases. "I thought you would, since, y'know, sunflowers clean up nuclear waste and such."

She raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"It's true, Ben asked. The guy we had to go save grew sunflowers for a number of nuclear disasters to help save the environment." Five sits on her bed, Ben following suit.

"We thought you might like one," Ben agrees sheepishly. Vanya sighs at them, then smiles.

It's not the first time they've brought up Vanya sharing a name with the Tsar Bomba, and she's sure it won't be the last. It's actually nice to be thought of in the middle of a high-stress situation, and it was sweet of them to bring her a gift.

"Thank you," she says, "I'm gonna go get a glass to put it in."

* * *

When Five leaves a week later, she looks at it, sitting on her windowsill, and hopes.

* * *

It dies before she accepts he's not coming back.

* * *

She hadn't thought any of her siblings sides Ben had noticed the flower, forlorn and dead on her windowsill, but apparently, they had. Or at least, Klaus did. He hands her a new one randomly, after unsuccessfully sneaking back into the house from wherever he'd been. He badly jokes about sunflowers not being very emo so he had to get her a new one, twitches and disappears around the corner.

She says thank you to an empty room and quietly replaces the dead one. Perhaps it's supposed to be healing, a chance at reconciliation with a missing boy.

All she sees is a flash of bright, teleport-blue behind her eyelids. Then she can't even see that for the tears, pouring out after months of numbness.

She hasn't _felt_ this strongly in who-knew-how-long.

It doesn't last near long enough. Not for the boy who sheltered their childhoods. Not for her best friend.

Not for her _brother_.

* * *

After Klaus, she receives more of them from her other siblings. Diego hands her one after a particularly hard mission, Allison gives her a packet of sunflower seeds and some dirt in a jar on their birthday.

She enters her room one day to find that Luther had apparently painted her a sunflower on a bomber airplane model, one based on the planes used for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Somehow, Vanya finds it in her to laugh.

* * *

"Ah, there's our Viola! Or should I say Ivan?" Ben teases as Vanya stepped into his room to show off the shorts she'd stolen from him. Klaus had started wearing skirts recently, and she'd realized how much she preferred pants to the uniform skirts, and Ben had graciously allowed her to take some of his.

She freezes at the old nicknames for half a second, before laughing. It's easier than crying. Viola was a nickname Five had come up with to be a jerk, after he heard her lecture Klaus on the difference between a violin and a viola.

"_It's just a small violin, right? And you're small, and you play violin. So, it works!" He teased, with that smirk he reserved for when he _knew_ he was pressing buttons she didn't know she had._

Hearing it again _ached_ in a way she hadn't been prepared for, but at the same time she hadn't realized she'd missed it so much.

"Only if I call you Benjamin Franklin," Vanya says, and this time the laughter is genuine.

When Ben dies, she wonders if he brought up those nicknames on purpose.

She wonders if he knew.

She packs up and leaves the next day.

* * *

The flowers can't follow her except in small quantities to her school dorm. When she gets an apartment, they fill up every nook and cranny. Her students compliment them, her landlady askes her to clean up any dirt that spills.

It is so very bright and yellow around her, but she is so very numb and grey.

* * *

When she writes the Book, she feels more alive than she has in years.

Her flowers look grey.

* * *

Leonard loves sunflowers too.

* * *

Her powers thrum, a steady beating echoing drum she can no longer contain. It's electrifying and terrifying and _freeing_ and _how could Reginald have taken this from her? _It swirls up, dances over the violin. Color flashes, no longer behind closed eyelids but _everywhere_ and for _everything_ and there's so _much_ and Allison was there just a moment ago and hadn't Vanya killed her? But no she had shown up she had _smiled_ and looked _proud_ and-

_"I just wanted to ask if you knew that 'Vanya' was the codename of a Russian nuclear bomb?"_ Ben whispers in her ear, just as she remembered him saying it, all those years ago. Her playing calms, gently teasing the notes out as she remembers that day.

It's ironic, really. Perhaps he'd been right, perhaps she really _had_ been named after Russian nuclear bomb.

_"The guy we had to go save grew sunflowers for a number of nuclear disasters to help save the environment."_ Five murmured. She smiles sadly. Was it bad she felt worse for being the reason he spent 45 years in the apocalypse than she did for actually causing it?

Maybe there were sunflowers in the apocalypse. Maybe he'd seen them and thought of her.

She closes her eyes and-

_Bang!_

The world turned white.

* * *

It's a couple years into the apocalypse that Five noticed them.

Whatever had knocked out all life on earth and destroyed the buildings left the plants, but also seemed to destroy the weather patterns. It had hailed, snowed, rained _and_ had a heatstroke all in the space of the first week Five had been here, and only got worse. Sandstorms were a huge thing, coming on suddenly, and sometimes in the middle of another bad weather phenomena. By the time Five was able to poke his head out, all the plants had died.

All in all, Five could only mark the first three years due to careful track of the days, plus or minus a couple months. Through years four through six, the weather seemed to settle into something resembling seasons, though he was pretty sure they were skewered. It started cooling off for winter way before it should and lasted much longer than it should.

So, Five subsisted on whatever he could scrounge, cans, roaches, whatever. He worked on surviving, and on getting out. That was all.

But a couple years in, with the weather finally calming, the plants started to come back. He didn't notice for several months, but one day he looked up and it was _green_. Everywhere. Bushes sprouted out of concrete slabs, grass poked through every nook and cranny.

The sandstorms had coated the city in dirt, and the plants gladly took every inch they were given. Five found some books on plants in the library and looked up which ones were edible.

Unsurprisingly, not very many of the ones currently in the city were, but he figured if he can find a plant store the seeds will still be good. He might not have to worry as much about food if he could figure out gardening.

Really, how hard could it be?

In the meantime, he continued scouting for food while the weather was still good. Which was, again, when he first saw them. He'd popped into what might have once been a garden, now overrun by whatever the ground fancied, and paused. Sunflowers had sprouted, towering above the rest. Their faces were turned towards Five, their leaves outstretched invitingly.

He thought of Vanya, wondered what she did in the years following her book. It's not the first time he's wondered about her. He hopes she still liked sunflowers. Maybe he should take the sunflowers to her grave?

No, no. He had more important things to do. He needed more food, more water, Dolores could use a new outfit, he was running low on paper…

…There were seven sunflowers exactly.

He doesn't take them immediately. He marked them on the map of the city he kept with a little number 7, and left.

Later though, if seven sunflowers find themselves de-seeded and placed on a grave…

Well.

There's no one left to care.

No one but the lonely boy at the end of the world.

* * *

Several months after and seventeen years before the end of the world, Vanya and Allison go shopping.

It's such a normal, teenagery-thing that Vanya's finding it hard to believe she's doing it. Allison had taken her to the mall, and they were giggling together over ice cream. Allison poked her tongue out, trying to get some off her nose. Vanya snorted again.

"Okay, okay," Allison finally gave up, wiping it off with a napkin. She grinned mischievously. "Where do you want to go next?"

"I, I don't know…" Vanya hedged. It still felt weird to hang out with her formerly famous sister, more so than hanging out with Ben and Five, but less so than with the rest of their siblings. With Allison, Ben and Five it doesn't feel like they're including her just because they're afraid of her ending the world again if they don't. Instead it feels… like family. Even so, it's hard to let go of the pain, of the guilt, and to speak her mind.

Not that she actually knows where she wants to go next in the mall anyway. Allison nodded, standing.

"Well, let's just walk around then. If you see somewhere you wanna go, just tell me." Her sister stated, holding out an arm. Vanya giggled and looped her own through it. They sauntered through the mall, Vanya trying desperately to match Allison's confident march. People whisper, flashes of color in her vision, and words she shouldn't have been able to hear – _"Is that The Rumor?" "Looks like her." "Who's that girl with her?" _– clear as day. Vanya jutted her chin out a bit further, noticed Allison nod in approval. Her chest warmed at her sister's approval.

She turned her head-

And saw exactly where she wanted to go.

She tugged Allison through the doors, heading straight to the bright yellow display. Leaves brushed at her skin as she picked them up, turning to Allison.

Her sister smiled delightedly. "I'll pay."

"Thank you," Vanya said, feeling more confidant than she had all day, with them in her arms – with her _symbol_ in her arms. The sunflowers rustle with the movement when she puts them down on the conveyor belt.

Somehow, the moment – her sister at her side, her other siblings back at home making birthday arrangements, the sunflowers catching the light – felt like forgiveness.

Felt like home.

Felt like love.

Felt like a new, beautiful chance.

She closed her eyes, breathed in, opened them.

And Vanya Hargreeves began a new life.


End file.
